<h2 style="color: red;">The Consolations of Spinsterhood</h2>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"A Great
Miration"</div>
<p>The attached members of the community
are wont to make what Uncle Remus
called "a great miration," when a woman
deliberately chooses spinsterhood as her lot in
life, rather than marriage.</p>
<p>There is an implied pity in their delicate
inquiries, and always the insinuation that the
spinster in question could never have had an
offer of marriage. The husband of the lady
leading the inquisition may have been one of
the spinster's first admirers, but it is never
safe to say so, for so simple a thing as this
has been known to cause trouble in families.</p>
<p>If it is known positively that some man has
offered her his name and his troubles, and
there is still no solitaire to be seen, the logical
hypothesis is charitably advanced, that she has
been "disappointed in love." It is possible
for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but
only the married are ever disappointed in love.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Cause
of Stagnation</div>
<p>The married women who ask the questions
and who, with gracious kindness, hunt up attractive
men for the unfortunate young woman
to meet, are, all unknowingly, one great
cause of stagnation in the marriage-license
market.</p>
<p>Nothing so pleases a woman safely inside
the bonds of holy matrimony as to confide
her sorrows, her regrets, and her broken
ideals to her unattached friends. Many a
woman thinks her ideal is broken when it is
only sprained, but the effect is the same.</p>
<p>Was the coffee weak and were the waffles
cold, and did Monsieur express his opinion of
such a breakfast in language more concise
than elegant? Madame weeps, and gives a
lurid account of the event to the visiting
spinster. By any chance, does a girl go
from her own dainty and orderly room into
an apartment strewn with masculine belongings,
confounded upon confusion such as
Milton never dreamed? Does she have to
wait while her friend restores order to the
chaos? If so, she puts it down in her mental
note-book, upon the page headed "Against."</p>
<p>The small domestic irritations which crowd<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></SPAN></span>
upon the attached woman from day to day,
leaving crow's feet around her eyes and delicate
tracery in her forehead, have a certain
effect upon the observing. But worse than
this is the spectre of "the other woman,"
which haunts her friend from day to day, to
the grave—and after, if the dead could tell
their thoughts.</p>
<p>If she has been safely shielded from books
which were not written for The Young Person,
Mademoiselle believes that marriage is a
bond which is not to be broken except by
death. It is a severe shock when she first
discovers that death changes nothing; that it
is only life which separates utterly.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">That
Pitiful
Story</div>
<p>That pitiful story of "the other woman"
comes from quarters which the uninitiated
would never suspect. With grim loyalty,
married women hide their hearts from each
other. Many a smile conceals a tortured soul.
When the burden is no longer to be borne, a
spinster is asked to share it.</p>
<p>A woman will forgive a man anything except
disloyalty to herself. Crimes which the
law stands ready to punish rank as naught
with her, if the love between them is untarn<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></SPAN></span>ished
by doubt or mistrust. Any offence
prompted by her own charm, even a duel to
the death with a rival suitor, is easily condoned.
But though God may be able to forgive
disloyalty, in her heart of hearts no
woman ever can.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">An Idle
Flirtation</div>
<p>More often than not, it is simply an idle flirtation,
or, at the most, a passing fancy which the
next week may prove transient and unreal.
The woman with the heartache will say, with
wet eyes and quivering lips: "I know, positively,
that my husband has done nothing
wrong. I would go to the stake upon that belief.
He is only weak and foolish and a little
vain, perhaps, and some day he will see his
mistake, but I cannot bear to see him compromise
himself and me in the eyes of the world.
Of course, <i>I</i> know," she will say, proudly,
"but there are others who do not,—who are
always ready to suspect,—and I will not have
them pity me!"</p>
<p>When nearly all the married friends a spinster
has have come to her with the same
story, the variations being individual and of
slight moment, she begins to have serious
doubts of matrimony as a satisfactory career.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></SPAN></span>
Women who have been married five, ten, and
even twenty years; women with children
grown and whom the world counts safely and
happily married, will sob bitterly in the embrace
of the chosen girl friend.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Indifference</div>
<p>Indifference is the only counsel one has to
offer, but even so, it gradually becomes the
first of the steppes upon the heart-way which
lead to an emotional Siberia.</p>
<p>Of course there are women who are insanely
jealous of their husbands, and, more rarely,
men who are jealous of their wives. Jealousy
may be explained as innate vanity and selfishness
or as a defect in temperament, but at any
rate, it is a condition which is far past the
theoretical stage.</p>
<p>It is hard for a spinster to understand why
any woman should wish to hold a man against
his will. A dog who has to be kept chained,
in order to be retained as a pet, is never a very
satisfactory possession. It seems natural to
apply the same reasoning to human affairs,
for surely no love is worth having which is
not a free gift.</p>
<p>No girl would feel particularly flattered by a
proposal, if it were put in this form: "Will<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></SPAN></span>
you marry me? No one else will." Yet the
same girl, married, would gladly take her
husband to a desert island, that she might be
sure of him forever.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Behind
Prison
Bars</div>
<p>Love which needs to be put behind prison
bars, that it may not escape, is not love, but
attraction, fascination, or whatever the psychologists
may please. A man chooses his
wife, not because there are no other women,
but in spite of them. It is a pathetic acknowledgment
of his poor judgment, if he lets the
world suspect that his choice was wrong.</p>
<p>There are some souls that hie them faraway
from civilisation, to convents, monasteries, and
western plains, that they may keep away from
temptation. In the same fashion, woman tries
to isolate her lord and master. If he meets
women at all, they are those invisibly labeled
"not dangerous."</p>
<p>The world makes as many saints as sinners,
and the man who needs to be kept away from
any sort of temptation is weak indeed. There
are many of his kind, but he is the better man
in the end who meets it face to face, fights
with it like a soldier, and wins like a king.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Thousand
Foes</div>
<p>The mother of Sparta bade her son return<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></SPAN></span>
with his shield or on it, and the thought has
potential might to-day. If a man honestly
loves a woman, she need have no fear of the
thousand foes that wait to take him from her.
If he does not, the sooner she understands the
truth, the better it is for both. There are
many people who consider love a dream, but
they usually grow to think of marriage as the
cold breakfast.</p>
<p>Men are but children of a larger growth. A
small boy forgets his promise to stay at home
and tears madly down the street in the discordant
wake of a band. The same boy, in
later years, will follow his impulses with equal
readiness, for he is taught conformity to outward
laws, but very seldom self-control.</p>
<p>The fear of "the other woman" may be
largely assuaged by a spinster's confidence in
her ability to cope with the difficult situation,
should it ever present itself, but there are other
considerations which act as a discouragement
to matrimony.</p>
<p>The chains of love may be sweet bondage,
but freedom is hardly less dear. The spinster,
like the wind, may go where she listeth, and
there is no one to say her nay. A modern<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></SPAN></span>
essayist has pointed out that "if a mortal
knows his mate cannot get away, he is apt to
be severe and unreasonable."</p>
<p>The thought of being compelled to ask for
money, and perhaps to meet with refusal,
frequently acts as a deterrent upon incipient
love. A man is often generous with his
sweetheart and miserly with his wife. In the
days of courtship, the dollars may fly on wings
in search of pleasure for the well-beloved, and
yet, after marriage, they will be squeezed until
the milling is worn smooth, the eyes start
from the eagle, and until one half-way expects
to hear the noble bird scream.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Unlimited
Credit</div>
<p>There are girls in every circle, married to
men not by any means insolvent, who have
unlimited credit, but never any money of their
own. They have carriages but no car fare;
fine stationery, monogrammed and blazoned
with a coat of arms, but not by any chance a
postage stamp.</p>
<p>Many a woman in such circumstances covenants
with the tradespeople to charge as merchandise
what is really cash, and sells laces
and ribbons to her friends a little below cost.
When a girl is approached with a plea to have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></SPAN></span>
her purchases charged to her friend's account,
and to pay her friend rather than the merchant,
is it not sufficient to postpone possible
matrimony at least six months? Adversity
has no terrors for a woman; she will gladly
share misfortune with the man she loves, but
simple selfishness is a very different proposition.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"Wedded
to their
Art"</div>
<p>There are also the dazzling allurements
offered by various "careers" which bring
fame and perhaps fortune. The glittering
triumphs of a prima donna, a picture on the
line in the Salon, or a possible book which
shall sell into the hundred thousands, are not
without a certain charm, even though people
who are "wedded to their art" sometimes
get a divorce without asking for it.</p>
<p>The universal testimony of the great, that
fame itself is barren, is thrust aside as of small
moment. She does not realise that it is love
for which she hungers, rather than fame, which
is the admiration of the many. Sometimes
she learns that "the love of all is but a small
thing to the love of one" and that in a right
marriage there would be no conscious sacrifice.
If she were not free to continue the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></SPAN></span>
work that she loved, she would feel no
deprivation.</p>
<p>Happiness is often thrust aside because of
her ideals. She demands all things in a single
man, forgetting that she, too, is human and not
by any means faultless. Some day, perhaps
too late, she understands that love and criticism
lie far apart, that love brings beauty
with it, and that the marks of individuality
are the very texture of charm, as the splendour
of the opal lies in its flaws.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Vital
Touch</div>
<p>There is always the doubt as to whether
the seeker may be the one of all the world to
find the inmost places in her heart. Taste and
temperament may be akin, position and purpose
in full accord, and yet the vital touch may
be lacking. Sometimes, in the after-years, it
may be found by two who seek for it patiently
together, but too often dissonance grows into
discord and estrangement.</p>
<p>The march of civilisation has done away
with the odium which was formerly the portion
of the unattached woman. It is no disgrace
to be a spinster, and apparently it is
fitting and proper to be an old maid, since so
many of them have "Mrs." on their cards, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></SPAN></span>
since there are so many narrow-minded and
critical men who fully deserve the appellation.</p>
<p>There is no use in saying that any particular
girl is a spinster from necessity rather than
choice. One has but to look at the peculiar
specimens of womankind who have married,
to be certain that there is no one on the wide
earth who could not do so if she chose.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"A Discipline"</div>
<p>Some people are fond of alluding to marriage
as "a discipline," and sometimes a
grey-haired matron will volunteer the information
that "the first years of marriage are anything
but happy." To one who has hitherto
regarded it from a different point of view,
the training-school idea is not altogether
attractive.</p>
<p>Men and women who have been through
it very seldom hold to their first opinions. It
is considered as a business arrangement, a
social contrivance, sometimes as an easy way
to make money, but by very few as the highest
form of happiness.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Small
Extravagances</div>
<p>The consolations of spinsterhood are mainly
negative, but the minus sign has its proper
place in the personal equation. "The other
woman" does not exist for the spinster, save<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></SPAN></span>
as a shadowy possibility. She is not asked
what she did with the nickel which was
given her day before yesterday, and thus
forced to make confession of small extravagances,
or to reply, with such sweetness as
she may muster, that she bought a lot on a
fashionable street with part of it, and has
the remainder out at interest. She does not
have to stay at home from social affairs
because she has no escort, for the law has
not apportioned to her a solitary man, and
she has a liberty of choice which is not
accorded her married friend.</p>
<p>She is not subjected to the humiliation of
asking a man for money to pay for his own
food, his own service, and even his own
laundry bill. She can usually earn her own,
if the gods have not awarded her sufficient
gold, and there is no money which a woman
spends so happily as that which she has
earned herself.</p>
<p>The "career" lies before her, and she has
only to choose the thing for which she is
best fitted, and work her way upward from
the lowest ranks to the position of a star
of the first magnitude. Opportunity is but<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></SPAN></span>
another name for health, obstacles make firm
stepping-stones, and that which is dearly
bought is by far the sweetest in the end.
Of course there are "strings to pull," but
no one needs them. Success is more lasting
if it is won in an open field, without favour,
and in spite of generous measures of it bestowed
upon the opposition.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Greatest
Consolation</div>
<p>But of all the consolations of spinsterhood,
the greatest is this,—that out of the dim and
uncertain future, perchance in the guise of
a divorced man or a widower with four
children, The Prince may yet come.</p>
<p>"On his plain but trusty sword are these
words only—Love and Understand." Across
the unsounded, estranging seas, with a whole
world lying immutably between, he, too, may
be waiting for the revelation. He may come
as a knight of old, with banners, jewels, and
flashing steel, to the clarion ring of trumpet
or cymbal, or softly, in the twilight, like
one whose presence is felt before it is made
known.</p>
<p>Out of the city streets The Prince may
come, tired of the endless struggle, when the
tide of the human has beaten heavily upon<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></SPAN></span>
his jaded soul, or through the woods, with
the silence of the forest still upon him. His
path may lie through an old garden, where
marigold and larkspur are thickly interwoven,
and shadowy spikes of mignonette make all
the summer sweet, or through the frosty
darkness, when the earth is dumb with snow
and the midnight stars have set the heavens
ablaze with spires of sapphire light.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">At the
First
Meeting</div>
<p>Sometimes, at the first meeting The Prince
is known, by that mysterious alchemy which
lies in the depths of the maiden soul and
often, after long waiting, a friend throws off
his disguise and royalty stands revealed.
Sometimes he is the comrade of the far-off
childish years, the schoolmate of a later time,
or someone whose hand has proved a strength
and solace in times of deepest grief.</p>
<p>"To Love and Understand!" All else
may be forgiven, if he has but these two gifts,
for they are as the crest and royal robe. Bare
and empty his hands may be, but these are
the kingly rights.</p>
<p>Slowly, and sometimes with a strange fear
which makes her tremble, there steals into
her heart a great peace. With it comes in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></SPAN></span>finite
tenderness and an unspeakable compassion,
not only for him, but for all the world.
Love's laughter changes to questioning too
deep for smiles or tears—the boundless aspiration
of the soul toward all things true.</p>
<p>Playthings and tinsel are cast away. The
music of the dance dies in lingering, discordant
fragments, and in its place comes the full
tone of an organ and the majestic movement
of a symphony. The web of the daily living
grows beautiful in the new light, for the Hand
that set the pattern has been gently laid upon
her loom.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Through
all the
Years to
Come</div>
<p>Through all the years to come, they are to
be together; he and she. There will be no
terror in the wilderness, no sting in poverty
or defeat—hunger and thirst can be forgotten.
Wherever Destiny may point the way, they
are to fare together—he and she.</p>
<p>Somewhere, in a world whose only shame
is its uncleanliness, they two are to make a
home and keep the little space around them
wholly clean. Somewhere, they two will
show the world that the old ideals are not
lost; that a man and a woman may still live
together in supreme and lasting content.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></SPAN></span>
Somewhere, too, they will teach anew the old
lesson, that it is unyielding Honour at the core
of things that keeps them sound and sweet.</p>
<p>There is nothing in all life so beautiful as
that first dream of Home; a place where
there is balm for the tortured soul, new courage
for the wavering soul, rest for the tired
soul, and stronger trust for the soul caught
in the snares of doubt and disbelief—a place
where one may be wholly and joyfully one's
self, where one's mistakes are never faults,
where pardon ever anticipates the asking,
where love follows swiftly upon understanding
and understanding upon love.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Sceptre of
the King</div>
<p>"To Love and Understand!" He who
holds the sceptre of the king may rule right
royally. There is solace for the tired traveller
within the cloister of that other heart, and the
pitiful chains which some call marriage would
rust and decay at the entrance to that holy
place.</p>
<p>The spotless peace within the inner chamber
is his alone. There his motives are never
questioned, nor his words distorted beyond
their meaning, and his daily purposes are ever
read aright.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The dream is forever centred upon the
coming of The Prince. Sometimes, with the
grim irony of Fate, he is seen when both are
bound—and there are some who deem a heartache
too great a price to pay for the revelation.
Now and then, after many years, he comes to
claim his own.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Grey
Angel and
the Prince</div>
<p>And sometimes, too, when one has long
waited and prayed for his coming; when
the sight has grown dim with watching and the
frosty rime of winter has softly touched the
dark hair, the Grey Angel takes pity and
closes the tired eyes.</p>
<p>The lavender and the dead rose-leaves
breathe a hushed fragrance from the heaps
of long-stored linen; the cricket and the tiny
clock keep up their cheery song, because they
do not know their gentle mistress can no
longer hear. The slanting sunbeams of afternoon
mark out a delicate tracery upon the
floor, and the shadow of the rose-geranium
in the window is silhouetted upon the opposite
wall. And then, into the quiet house,
steals something which seems like an infinite
calm.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Exquisite
Peace</div>
<p>But the dainty little lady who lies fast<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></SPAN></span>
asleep, with the sun resting caressingly upon
her, has gained, in that mystical moment,
both understanding and love. For there comes
an exquisite peace upon her—as though she
had found The Prince.</p>
<p class="center">THE END.</p>
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